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Poll Finds Regurgitation of Drive-By Attacks on GOP

RUSH: Here we go, we got a Gallup poll out there. We have a Gallup poll, and guess what the number one critique of the Republican Party is in the Gallup poll? Guess what the two most frequently mentioned criticisms of the Republican Party are? Take a stab at it. This is easy as pie if you stop and think about it and you don't have to think about it too long. Don't intellectualize it. What are the two, within the public domain, a public poll, Gallup, the two most often mentioned problems the Republican Party face?

No. Not old men. Inflexible and unwilling to compromise. Those are the two things, right there in the Gallup poll. And so The Politico's got this, and they're off and running with it. "Democrats, Republicans and independents all had the same top complaint about the GOP in a Gallup poll released Monday: It’s inflexible. The poll asked respondents to name two things they liked and disliked about the nation’s political parties. More cited inflexibility and unwillingness to compromise than anything else," about the Republican Party. In fact, 26% of Republicans said that, that the problem is that it's inflexible and unwilling to compromise.

Now, what does this tell us? It tells us absolutely nothing. All it tells us is what the media is saying about the Republican Party. And so the Gallup poll goes out and grabs, you know, average Tom, Dick, or Harry off the street, "What do you think the biggest problem of the parties are?"

"Well, you know, the Republicans, you know, they don't compromise. They're too partisan and they're inflexible. They won't move at all. You know, they're just stuck in stone out there."

Twelve percent, the third claim, the third thing on the list of what's wrong with the Republicans is it's a party for the rich. So it's inflexible, it's too partisan, and it is focused on the rich. The Washington Post did a story on this. "The poll asked respondents an open-ended question about one or two critiques of the GOP. The top response -- at 21 percent -- was that the party was inflexible and/or unwilling to compromise."

What came in third was not the rich, though. What came in third was, get this. I'm not making this up. The first two complaints, the party is inflexible and unwilling to compromise. The third complaint was, it doesn't stand up for its positions and it gives in too easily. Now, how does that fit with the first two? Well, it doesn't. It makes no sense, and in my mind it relegates the poll to the heap, to the ash heap. The poll is pointless and worthless. If the first two complaints are too inflexible and too partisan, doesn't compromise enough, and then the third problem is, doesn't stand up for their positions enough and gives in too easily, that was the preferred description of 99% of respondents, including 14% of the Republicans.

Now, how do you fix the third one, if you are the first two? If you're too partisan and you're too inflexible, how do you fix the fact that you don't stand up for own positions? Anyway, they're running with this out there in the Drive-By Media. It's actually not a poll. It's a word association game. What Gallup did was ask people to name one or two things that they like about each party and one or two things that they dislike. As far as what the complaints about the Democrats are, I have no idea, I can't find that. The only thing I can find -- and they asked Democrats, what are the top two complaints you have about the Democrats, I can't find that anywhere. I can't find it in Gallup. I can't find it in Politico. I can't find it in the Washington Post, but I can find everywhere what everybody thinks is wrong with the Republicans. But I can't find anybody that has anything bad to say about the Democrats, or at least identify what their problems are.

Other issue-based critiques the Republicans named by at least 3% of Democrats, including its positions on social issues, abortion, immigration, favoring big business, gay marriage. That's down to 3%, by the way. Only 3% of the respondents cited gay marriage and the position the Republican Party has on that as a problem. The only policy oriented criticism that as many as 3% of Republicans had of their own party is its broad position on social issues. Still 3%, insignificant. Those top two things, inflexible and unwilling to compromise, and all it is is a repeat, rehash of what people hear about the Republican Party in the media.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Brian in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Hi, Brian. Great to have you on the program. Hello.

CALLER: It's a privilege to speak with you, Rush. I was calling about the poll that you had mentioned earlier regarding the perception of Republicans as being inflexible and unwilling to compromise?

RUSH: Right.

CALLER: I think that's a fallacy on two levels. First of all, it's simply not true. I wish that it were. I think, as you mentioned leading up to this call, the Republican Party in recent times has proven itself all too willing to compromise and not stand on principle, and so that's the first problem I have with that. And second, there's this lie, and you've done a masterful job over the years of highlighting this, these lies about America that seep into the public consciousness long enough and they eventually become perceived as being true. There's this lie that America was built on competing factions, compromising and coming to the table and hammering out an agreement, and it's an absolute bald-faced lie.

If that were true, I submit to you that the United States of America wouldn't even exist. We've gone from men like Patrick Henry who said, "Give me liberty or give me death." There was no compromise when it came to liberty and individual freedom. I think if the Republican Party of today were around back then they would have hammered out some agreement with the king and put us into further subservience and this country would have never been founded. It's a lie. We need to stand against that. This nation was not built on compromise. It was built on standing firm on principle, and we need more men like that today, not less.

RUSH: That's a good point. You're right. We've come from Patrick Henry, "Give me liberty or give me death," to (imitating Clinton) "I did not have sex with that woman, not a single time. I never lied to anybody, ever." That's a massive, massive jump.